Speaker 1: Imagine a battlefield that just totally defies the conventional physics
of modern warfare. I mean, picture a nuclear submarine lurking
in the absolute darkest, most crushing abyss of the ocean.
Speaker 2: Right way down where there's zero.
Speaker 1: Light exactly and right now. Eventually that vessel has to
surface or at least come, you know, precariously close to
the surface, just to catch a GPS signal and correct
its internal.
Speaker 2: Navigation because it drifts overtime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and every single time it does that, it becomes vulnerable.
So now imagine that same submarine perfectly navigating those pitch
black waters for months down to the literal millimeter wow,
without ever once needing to look up at a satellite
and picture spacecraft orbiting the Earth pinpointing their exact locations
in the infinite vastness of the cosmos, entirely on their own,
completely independent of any external signals that an enemy could
you know, jam or spoo for destroyed.
Speaker 2: It's a complete game changer, it really is.
Speaker 1: And while you are picturing all of that immense physical hardware,
step into the invisible world for a second. Think about
the digital vault guarding your bank account, your personal health records,
your entire digital identity.
Speaker 2: The stuff that actually keeps our society running honestly right.
Speaker 1: Locked behind a wall of encryption that is fundamentally mathematically unbreakable,
unbreakable by any standard we currently understand. I mean, it
sounds like the plot of a sci fi thriller set
a century from now, but this isn't fiction. This is
the technological reality being built right now.
Speaker 2: We really are standing at the absolute edge of a
paradigm shift here. And we spend a lot of time
talking about software updates and faster processors, but what you
are describing is a fundamental rewrite of how human beings
interact with both the physical and the digital universe. Yeah,
the basic rules of measurement, navigation, secrecy, they're all being
torn down and rebuilt from the atomic level up.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrilling Threads. We take a massive stack of sources, articles,
research papers, interviews and extract the essential insights. We are
your guides to the material, cutting through the noise so
you can understand the forces actively shaping our world.
Speaker 2: And for this thread, we are completely unpacking a genuinely stunning,
revealing Fox Business YouTube interview.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's titled coming Faster than everyone thought before. Ceo
stuns on quantum speed and the focus is Niccolo Demasi.
He's the CEO of a quantum computing company called ion Q, and.
Speaker 2: The claims he is making in this interview about the
immediate real world deployment of quantum technology are while they're staggering.
We are not talking about laboratory theory anymore.
Speaker 1: No, not at all. We are talking about global warfare,
advanced supply chains, and this looming cybersecurity cliff that the
world's largest banks are frankly scrambling to avoid.
Speaker 2: The sheer scale of the operation Debasi describes is what
really demands our attention here. I think the word quantum
suffers from severe semantic saturation.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, It's just a buzzword now right.
Speaker 2: We hear it movies in tech mark getting startup pitches.
It usually just serves as a synonym for magic or really.
Speaker 1: Fast quantum fast, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But when you look at the specific operational domains
mentioned in this interview, from the absolute crushing depths of
the ocean floor to the highest echelons of space and
straight into the literal vaults of global financial institutions, we
are moving way past buzzwords. We're looking at a permanent
alteration of human capability.
Speaker 1: That is exactly why we are pulling this thread today.
We are going to strip away the complex layers of
this fast paced financial and technological news segment. We want
to explore the mechanics, not just you know, what this
technology supposedly does, but how it.
Speaker 2: Does it, the underlying physics of it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and why this invisible race is going to impact
everything from national security to your very own personal data.
So okay, let's unpack this. The physical deployment of this
technology is the logical starting point, right definitely.
Speaker 2: To really comprehend the stakes, we have to move away
from the abstract image of a freeze cold supercomputer sitting
in some pristine, sterile laboratory.
Speaker 1: With the scientists and the white coats and all.
Speaker 2: The wires exactly the giant gold chandeliers. We have to
look at the messy, high stakes war fighting domains where
this hardware is actually going.
Speaker 1: Because Demassie makes a sweeping declaration right out of the gate.
He states that ion Q is the only quantum company
in history to reach a point where they operate in
all war fighting domains.
Speaker 2: All of them, all of them.
Speaker 1: He explicitly lists them from submarines to the heavens, meaning
space up in the air and on the ground. Now,
when I hear that, my immediate reaction is well skepticism
regarding the physical reality of it.
Speaker 2: Sure sounds impossible, right.
Speaker 1: Because we are talking about machines that traditionally require temperatures,
coldered and deep space just to function. How do you
take something that delicate and throw it into the ocean
or strap it to a rocket.
Speaker 2: That is the defining engineering bottleneck of the entire industry.
It's known as the ruggedization problem. Because in a classical
laboratory setup, specifically with superconducting quantum computers, you use those
massive dilution refrigerators you mentioned.
Speaker 1: To keep it near absolute zero.
Speaker 2: Yes, you are isolating quibots, which are the fundamental units
of quantum information, from any environmental noise whatsoever. A slight
temperature change, a stray magnetic field, even like cosmic rays,
can cause the system to lose its quantum.
Speaker 1: State, which is called decoherence.
Speaker 2: Exactly, decoherence and a battlefield is the very definition of
environmental noise. It is pure chaos, explosions, vibrations, extreme heat.
Speaker 1: So if a traditional quantum setup requires absolute zero. What
is Demasi actually putting on a submarine? I mean he
isn't installing a two ton cryogenic chandelier inside a cramped
metal tube diving into the Mariana Trench.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not. He's likely referring to a completely different
approach to quantum technology, specifically trapt ion technology, which is
actually ionq's foundational architecture.
Speaker 1: Okay, how does that differ from the freezing cold ones.
Speaker 2: Well, Instead of superconducting loops that need near absolute zero,
trapped ion systems use electromagnetic fields to suspend individual atoms,
often hit or beium or barium, inside of vacuum chambers
floating there in a vacuum. It's floating, and then you
use highly precise lasers to manipulate the states of those atoms. So,
while the vacuum chamber itself needs to be pristine, the
entire apparatus doesn't necessarily require the massive cryogenic infrastructure of
a superconducting system.
Speaker 1: Ah, So it's more adaptable, right.
Speaker 2: It can theoretically at least be miniaturized and ruggedized to
withstand the vibrations of a jet engine or the immense
pressure changes of a submarine.
Speaker 1: Okay, which brings us to what these miniaturized systems are
actually doing in those environments. Demasi specifically emphasizes quantum sensing capabilities.
He brings this up in the context of submarines needing
to shoot and spacecraft needing to know where they are.
Speaker 2: The sensing aspect is crucial.
Speaker 1: Let's break down the mechanics here. Because classical navigation feels
pretty advanced to most of us. I mean, we all
have GPS in our pockets. Why does a multi billion
dollar submarine or satellite need a quantum sensor to know
its location.
Speaker 2: To understand that quantum leap, you really have to look
at the fatal flaw of classical navigation in hostile environments.
Let's take the submarine. If you are deep underwater, radio
waves from GPS satellites simply do not penetrate the ocean.
Speaker 1: Right water blocks the signal completely exactly.
Speaker 2: You are entirely cut off from the global positioning grid.
So how do you know where you are? You rely
on an inertial navigation system or an i INS.
Speaker 1: How does that work?
Speaker 2: These systems use incredibly precise classical gyroscopes and accelerometers to
measure every tiny movement the submarine makes from its last
known position.
Speaker 1: It's essentially dead reckoning right like, you know where you started,
you know how fast you've been going and in what direction,
so you just do the math to calculate where you
must be right now precisely.
Speaker 2: But classical gyroscopes, even the crazy expensive laser ring gyroscopes
used by the military, rely on macroscopic physical properties, and
physical properties are always subject to friction, to tiny manufacturing imperfections,
to microscopic temperature gradients.
Speaker 1: So it's never one hundred percent perfect.
Speaker 2: Never, and over time these tiny errors compound. This is
called drift. A submarine's navigation system might drift by a
nautical mile over a few weeks.
Speaker 1: A whole mile. That seems like a huge margin of
error if you're trying to target something.
Speaker 2: It is eventually to get an accurate fix on your
location so you can, as the CEO points out, accurately
shoot a ballistic missile. You have to reset your system.
Speaker 1: Which means you have to surface or at least raise
an antenna, catch a satellite ping until your computer okay,
we are exactly here.
Speaker 2: In the moment you break the surface of the ocean,
you are visible. You emit a signal, you become a target.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you expose yourself to satellite imaging, to enemy radar
acoustic detection. It's a huge risk.
Speaker 2: But quantum sensors operate on an entirely different physical paratime.
They do not rely on spinning masses or macroscopic lasers.
They rely on the fundamental unchanging properties of atoms.
Speaker 1: Okay, walp me through that.
Speaker 2: Think of a quantum atomic interferometer. It actually utilizes the
wave like nature of atoms. You cool a cloud of atoms, gown,
put them into a superposition of states, and literally let
them fall through a vacuum chamber.
Speaker 1: Wait, you just drop them.
Speaker 2: You just drop them, and as they fall, they are
incredibly sensitive to the most microscopic variations in the Earth's
gravitational field or its magnetic field.
Speaker 1: Because gravity literally alters the wave interference pattern of the
falling atoms.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And here's the kicker. Because every single atom
of a specific isocope is entirely identical to every other
atom of that isotope in the universe, there are absolutely
no manufacturing imperfections.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, because nature manufactured it right.
Speaker 2: There is no physical friction. A quantum sensor reading the
Earth's gravitational topography can map its exact location down to
the millimeter. Doesn't need to look up at a satellite.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to emit a no ping at all.
Speaker 2: It just passively reads the fundamental physics of the terrain
around it.
Speaker 1: That drastically changes the metaphor we use to understand this.
I mean think of traditional computing and navigation as a
highly advanced map. Like classical navigation is like trying to
find your way through a dark room with a very
accurate measuring tape. You know, you walk ten feet from
the door, so you guess where the table is.
Speaker 2: But if your tape stretches even a millimeter, eventually you're
going to hit a wall.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Quantum computing, in the context of this interview, sounds
less like a map and more like an omnipresent radar
that just understands the fundamental physics of the terrain. It's
like suddenly turning on the lights in that dark room.
You just know exactly where everything is because you are
reading the fundamental fabric of the room.
Speaker 2: And the beauty of it is. You cannot jam the
Earth's gravitational feel.
Speaker 1: You literally can't spoof gravity, you.
Speaker 2: Cannot jam the magnetic signature of the ocean floor. That
is the true implication of bringing quantum sensing into these
word fighting domains, and the exact same logic applies to
the heavens. So the satellite right spacecraft currently rely on
star trackers, which are literally cameras looking at constellations, or
complex ground based radar to maintain their orbit. If an
adversary uses an anti satellite laser to blind your star tracker,
your satellite is effectively.
Speaker 1: Lost, doesn't know where it's pointing anymore.
Speaker 2: But a quantum enabled satellite maintains perfect atomic precision autonomously.
Speaker 1: Man Demasi ties this profound capability directly into a fascinating phrase.
Early in the interview, he mentions that the company considers
itself positioned to be part of the Golden Dome. The
Golden Dome, he explicitly states, they are a close partner
of the Administration and the Department of War, and that
they are in pole position to help expand our defensive
posture and also offensive.
Speaker 2: The phrase Golden Dome is highly evocative right. It's referencing comprehensive,
impenetrable layers of defense like the iron dome, but scaled up.
But his emphasis on expanding both defensive and offensive postures
is what signals the true shift here. How so well,
integrating quantum technology into the military framework isn't just an
iterative upgrade. It isn't just a faster processor for a
targeting computer. Yeah, it is a total rewrite of the
rules of engagement and the physical limits of stealth.
Speaker 1: Right Because if your adversary submarines are blindly feeling their
way through the dark with measuring tapes, and your submarines
have atomic level omnipresent awareness, the concept of deterrence completely collapses.
Speaker 2: It is a fundamental overmatch you can't fight, which you
can't even comprehend.
Speaker 1: But this theoretical high ground immediately crashes into the very real,
very messy realities of modern conflict discussed in our source material.
The broadcast grounds this heavily in recent global events.
Speaker 2: It does. The anchor, Liz directs the conversation straight into
the immediate headlines.
Speaker 1: And real quick before we dive into the specific part
of the source, I want to state explicitly to you,
the listener, we're looking at this strictly through the lens
of the technology discussed in our source material. We are
impartially reporting the geopolitical events mentioned in the Fox broadcast
to understand the technological catalyst, without taking any political sides
or endorsing any viewpoint.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we're just looking at the tech. So Liz brings
up the geopolitical tensions involving the US, Israel, Iran, and Jordan. Specifically,
she points to a recent event where Iran destroyed an
incredibly expensive, highly advanced anti missile radar system located in.
Speaker 1: Jordan, and strictly from a technological standpoint, setting aside the
vast geopolitical complexities of that region for a moment, this
incident highlights a fatal structural flaw in classical defense grids.
The anchor asks a really pointed question based on this event,
in the face of a classical, multimillion dollar radar system
being completely overwhelmed and destroyed, what can quantum enabled missile
defense actually do differently?
Speaker 2: It's the multimillion dollar question, how does it fundamentally solve
the problem that got the classical radar blown up in
the first place?
Speaker 1: Right, And Demassi's response is fascinating it is.
Speaker 2: He prefaces it by noting that a lot of their
work in this specific arena is classified, which sets a
distinct tone right away. But then he makes a definitive statement.
The future of the battlefield runs through quantum compute, explicitly
combining it with the quantum sensing capabilities we just unpacked.
Speaker 1: So let's dissect the gap between classical radar and quantum
compute in this scenario, why does a traditional radar system
fail when facing a modern threat?
Speaker 2: A classical radar system operates on a relatively straightforward mechanism.
It emits a burst of radio waves those ways hit
an object in the sky, a plane, a missile, a bird,
and bounce back to a receiver.
Speaker 1: Pretty basic thing.
Speaker 2: In return, exactly A classical computer then calculates the time
it took for the signal to return, determining the distance, speed,
and trajectory of the object. But modern warfare has evolved
specifically to exploit the limitations of that t sequent.
Speaker 1: Processing, right, because an incoming threat isn't just one slow
moving missile anymore.
Speaker 2: No, it's a swarm of hypersonic drones. It's ballistic missiles
deploying dozens of radar reflecting decoys.
Speaker 1: And advanced electronic warfare pods actively blasting the radar receiver
with digital noise just to confuse it.
Speaker 2: Exactly when a drone swarm accompanied by electronic jamming and
physical decoys enters a classical radars field of view, the
system is flooded with millions of conflicting data points.
Speaker 1: And the computer has to look at every single one.
Speaker 2: Yes, the classical computer has to process all those variables sequentially,
has to look at return signal A, calculated it's likelihood
of being a threat based on wind speed, trajectory, and
atmosphere conditions. Then it moves to return signal B.
Speaker 1: Then C, And even with the most advanced supercomputers, this
sequential processing takes time.
Speaker 2: It takes precious time, and if the computer guesses wrong,
or if the sheer volume of data causes a processing bottleneck,
the system fails. The radar system itself becomes the casualty
just gets overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: So how does quantum compute fundamentally change that processing mechanism.
We hear a lot of surface level explanations that a
quantum computer just tries everything at once. That doesn't really
explain the physics of why it's better at tracking a missile.
Speaker 2: The trying everything at once trope is a super common simplification,
but it really misses the actual power of the machine.
Classical computers process information in bits, ones, and zeros. A
switch is either on or off. A quantum computer uses quibbits,
which can exist in a state of superposition.
Speaker 1: The classic analogy is a coin, right like a classical
bit is a coin sitting on a table. Let's either
heads or tails. A quibit is a coin spinning in
the air. While it's spinning, it isn't strictly heads or tails.
It exists as a probability of both.
Speaker 2: That's a really helpful visualization. Yeah, but the real magic
happens when you introduce entanglement and quantum interference. When you
link multiple spinning coins together, their probabilities interact.
Speaker 1: Okay, how does that apply to the radar.
Speaker 2: Let's use an analogy. Classical computing is like trying to
find your way out of a massive, incredibly complex maze
by walking down every single dead end one by one,
drawing a map until you finally find the exit. It
takes an agonizing amount of time. Quantum computing is like
flooding that entire maze with water. The water instantly finds
every path, dead ends and all simultaneously.
Speaker 1: If the water finds every path, how do you know
which one is the exit? Don't you just have a
completely flooded maze? Like, how does it give you an answer?
Speaker 2: This is where quantum interference comes in. It's brilliant through
the algorithms designed for these machines, the wrong paths, the
dead ends are engineered to undergo destructive.
Speaker 1: Interference, meaning they cancel each other out exactly.
Speaker 2: Just like two opposing ripples in a pond, flattening the water. Meanwhile,
the right path, the actual exit, undergoes constructive interference. It
amplifies so when the quantum system collapses into a final answer,
it doesn't give you a million possibilities. It gives you
the singular optimal solution.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay. Translating that back to the battlefield, when
a drone swarm and a cloud of decoys are fired
at a base, a quantum enabled defense system isn't guessing
based on sequential processing. It is mapping every single variable,
every atmospheric fluctuation, every decoy signature, every minute variation and
speed into that quantum maze, and the wrong answers, the
decoys they cancel out, and the true trajectory of the
actual threat amplifies instantaneously. It resolves the exact location and
nature of a threat in a fraction of a second.
It just completely bypasses the bottleneck that overwhelms classical radar.
Speaker 2: That capability makes the anchors follow up question highly relevant.
She asks literally what a quantum computer built into a
radar system could do when a drone is shot at
a target, given the millions of possibilities of what it
will hit.
Speaker 1: And Demasi doesn't provide a classified schematic, but he points
to a tangible physical partnership right. He states that ion
Q has announced a partnership with a drone manufacturer called Heaven,
which is huge.
Speaker 2: That specific detail grounds all this theoretical physics into twisted
metal and spinning rotors.
Speaker 1: But I have to push back on the reality of
this timeline. Demasi says, they are working on short, medium,
and long term initiatives. But if ruganization is still such
a massive hurdle like we talked about, if we are
still figuring out how to keep trapped ions perfectly stable
in a vibrating environment, how much of this drone partnership
is actual boots on the ground reality.
Speaker 2: It's a fair question.
Speaker 1: I mean, how much is just a CEO forecasting a
vision for investors? Are they actually putting quantum processors on
drones today?
Speaker 2: It is the absolute necessary question to ask, because there
is a vast valley between a successful proof of concept
in a lab and a deployable military asset. It is
highly unlikely they are putting a fully functioning quantum computer
on a drone today.
Speaker 1: So what are you doing with heaven?
Speaker 2: The partnership likely involves using quantum compute on the ground
to optimize drone swarm behavior, aerodynamic design, or routing, while
simultaneously working on ruggedizing the condom sensors we discussed earlier
to eventually put on the chassis itself.
Speaker 1: Ah, so the drone becomes a node in a quantum
calculated network, even if it isn't curing the quantum processor
itself quite yet.
Speaker 2: Precisely, and Demasi directly addresses the skepticism regarding the timeline.
He states, regarding the changes they're bringing to the battlefield,
that it is coming faster than everyone thought.
Speaker 1: He really emphasizes that.
Speaker 2: He isn't pitching a distant fifty year dream. The public
partnership with the hardware manufacturer implies that integration testing, data linking,
and physical prototyping are actively happening right.
Speaker 1: Now, coming faster than everyone thought. That phrase is both
thrilling and honestly deeply unsettling, depending on where you sit,
and it provides a seamless transition into the broader global
implications discussed in the source material. Because if you have
a machine that can calculate a million chaotic variables to
track hypersonic missile in a fraction of a second, you
can point that exact same computational power at.
Speaker 2: Anything, anything at all.
Speaker 1: We have to shift our perspective from the literal battlefield
to the architecture of the global economy, and.
Speaker 2: The CEO provides the perfect bridge for that transition. He
contextualizes quantum computing within the most dominant technological narrative of
our time, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: Everyone's talking about AI, right.
Speaker 2: And he makes a critical observation noting that global adversaries,
and he specifically singles out China, recognize that after AI,
quantum is the next big wave. If we connect this
to the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: Right now, the entire world is utterly fixated on artificial intelligence.
We are watching large language models write code, generate art
diagnose diseases.
Speaker 2: But AI fundamentally is just the software. It is the
architectural brain attempting to find patterns in massive, incomprehensible oceans.
Speaker 1: Of data, and that brain is currently bottlenecked by its
skull classical computers. Even the most massive, energy hungker V
server farms running today's advanced AI eventually hit a hard
physical limit in how fast they can process complex, multi
variable problems.
Speaker 2: The models are getting smarter, but the hardware is reaching
the livids of Moore's law. You can only shrink a
silicon transistor so much before classical physics breaks down and
quantum tunneling causes the chip to just short circuit.
Speaker 1: So, if AI is the software desperately searching for patterns,
quantum computing is the foundational hardware leap it is the
engine giving that software previously impossible processing power. Demasi explicitly
zeros in on this when he talks about using this
power for calculating logistics and analyzing combinations you can forecast.
Speaker 2: Now, calculating logistics sounds incredibly dry, especially right after discussing
atomic submarine sensors and missile defense grids.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a spreadsheet, right.
Speaker 2: But mastering global logistics is the quiet foundation of geopolitical supremacy.
Speaker 1: Let's explore the sheer complexity of that, because it impacts
our daily lives far more than a missile shield. In
computers sci there is a famous concept called the traveling
salesman problem. A classic, it asks a seemingly simple question.
Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair,
what is the shortest possible route that visits each city
exactly once and returns to the origin city.
Speaker 2: It sounds like something you could solve on a napkin
and a.
Speaker 1: Diner exactly, but it is the ultimate test of computational scaling.
If you only have five cities, there are one hundred
and twenty possible routes. A pocket calculator can solve it.
If you have ten cities, there are over three million routes.
Speaker 2: It up fast.
Speaker 1: If you have fifteen cities, the number of possible routes
explodes to over eighty seven billion. If you try to
route a delivery truck to just twenty five specific houses
in a single neighborhood, the number of possible combinations is
larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe.
Speaker 2: Which is just staggering to think about.
Speaker 1: A classical computer simply cannot calculate every path. It relies
on heuristics, shortcuts, and educated guesses to find a good
enough route.
Speaker 2: Now escalate that from a local delivery truck to the
entire global supply chain. Consider the massive disruptions we have
witnessed over the last few years. A container ship gets
wedged sideways in the Suez Canal.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I want to mess that.
Speaker 2: Was Simultaneously, a severe storm system develops in the Atlantic,
fuel prices in Europe's spike due to geopolitical conflict, and
a factory fire in Taiwan halts the production of a
critical microchip component, all happening at once.
Speaker 1: A classical supercomputer running the best AI logistics software in
the world tries to solve this sequentially. It looks at
the canal blockage and calculates a detour around the Cape
of Good Hope. Then it checks the weather data and
realizes the detour intersects with the Atlantic storm, so it
recalculates a slower speed.
Speaker 2: Then it checks the fuel consumption for the new speed
against the spiked European prices.
Speaker 1: Exactly, it performs these sequential calculations millions of times, constantly
hitting dead ends, trying to find the least catastrophic option,
and by the time it outputs a solution, the store
has moved, the prices have changed, and the data is
completely obsolete.
Speaker 2: This is where the true power of quantum logistics emerges.
Returning to our flooded maze analogy, a quantum system doesn't
calculate one shipping route, check the weather, fail, and try another.
By mapping the logistical variables onto quibbits in a state
of superposition, the quantum algorithm essentially explores every possible shipping route,
interwoven with every projected weather pattern, overlaid with every fluctuating
fuel costs, and every inventory level at every global port,
all simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. The inefficient, expensive routes
destructively interfere and cancel out the optimal, perfectly balanced route
amplifies and emerges. The sheer awe of that concept is
what makes this technology feel so alien. We are talking
about the exact same mathematical foundation that tracks the microsecond
trajectory of an erratic drone swarm, turning around and perfectly
solving the billion variable puzzle of global trade, it finds
the absolute, mathematically optimal route to get life saving medicine
to a hospital or components to a factory. Factoring in
chaotic weather systems that classical computers can barely predict three
days out.
Speaker 2: When Demasi talks about combinations you can forecast, he is
talking about imposing order on systems so staggeringly complex that
they previously appeared entirely chaotic to human.
Speaker 1: Analysis, like predicting the future.
Speaker 2: Almost economic market fluctuations, global weather pattern modeling, pharmaceutical molecular folding,
supply chain vulnerabilities. Quantum compute promises to turn these unpredictable
systems into solvable equations. That is why adversaries recognized it
as the next big wave. It isn't just about military might.
Whoever controls that forecasting ability controls a high ground of
the global economy.
Speaker 1: But and this is a massive butt, there is a glaring,
terrifying vulnerability hidden inside that exact same capability. If a
quantum computer can instantly calculate a billion logistical routes or
map the chaotic variables of a missile strike, what happens
when you point that exact same unfathomable computational power at
the encryption guarding the global banking system.
Speaker 2: You trigger an immediate existential crisis for the digital architecture
of the modern world. This is the invisible battlefield, the
Mossy points out, and it affects every major corporation, every
government branch, and every single listener's personal data.
Speaker 1: The anchor shifts the conversation entirely to cybersecurity. She notes
that security firms are tracking something like sixty active highly
sophisticated activist groups. She explicitly mentions that major financial figures,
specifically Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, have
been issuing dire public warnings about this threat.
Speaker 2: When the head of the largest bank in the United
States and global intelligence trackers are sounding the exact same
alarm simultaneously, you are looking at a systemic foundational vulnerability.
The threat they are discussing isn't a tritional data breach.
Speaker 1: It's not someone guessing your password.
Speaker 2: No, it isn't phishing an employee to steal a credit
card number. It is the mathematic collapse of trust itself.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we dive into the grim reality of that collapse,
I have to point out a genuinely funny, deeply human
moment in the.
Speaker 2: Source material, Oh, I know what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: While Demasi is intensely explaining their highly advanced solution to
this global crisis, the transcription, or perhaps a momentary flip
of the tongue, has him stating that they are working
on post quantum photography.
Speaker 2: Yes, a rather jarring deviation from the intended technical terminology. Right.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify for anyone following the source text, he
absolutely meant cryptography, not photography, as amazing as a quantum
camera might be. He isn't pitching the banks on taking
incredibly high res atomic pictures of your money. No, he
is talking about the complex mathematics that hides your data cryptography.
But I honestly love moments like that. It grounds a
highly almost uncomfortably technical conversation back into reality. We are
dealing with mind bending, world altering physics, and sometimes the
transcript just spits out photography.
Speaker 2: It serves as a good reminder that behind these staggering
technological leaps our human beings having fast paced, sometimes messy conversations.
But the meat of his point regarding cryptography is the
core of their entire cybersecurity pitch. He introduces a concept
called quantum key distribution or QKD.
Speaker 1: He states that ion Q is partnering with the largest
banks in the world today to implement this, and the
question is why today. To understand the panic, we have
to understand the lock on the door. Right now, almost
all of the world's secure data, your bank transactions, military communications,
classified corporate secrets, the little padlock icon in your web
browser is protected by classical encryption algorithms. The most famous
is RSA.
Speaker 2: Named after Ron Rivist, Adi Schmer and Leonard Addelman, who
publicly described it in nineteen seventy seven. The entire foundation
of RSA and much of modern encryption, relies on a
specific mathematical asymmetry. Explain that for us, it is incredibly
easy to multiply to very large prime numbers together to
get a massive result. But if I only give you
the massive result, it is incredibly difficult and time consuming
for a classical computer to figure out which two prime
numbers I've multiplied together.
Speaker 1: Factoring massive primes is the bottleneck. If the numbers are
large enough, it would take a classical supercomputer millions or
even billions of years to test every combination and break
the encryption.
Speaker 2: Yes, so mathematically, your data is secure simply because nobody
has a billion years to wait for a password to crack.
Speaker 1: But here comes quantum, Here comes quantum.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety four, a mathematician named Peter Shore developed
a quantum algorithm. Shor's algorithm prove theoretically that a sufficiently
powerful quantum computer wouldn't have to guess prime factors sequentially.
By utilizing quantum interference again amplifying the correct answer and
canceling out the wrong ones, a quantum computer could solve
those specific mathematical problems in hours or even minutes.
Speaker 1: The day of fully scaled, fault tolerant quantum computer comes
online and runs Shor's algorithm, the vast majority of classical
encryption protecting the world's data is rendered instantly obsolete. It
is broken, the padlot completely vanishes.
Speaker 2: But as you pointed out, that full tolerant machine doesn't
exist quite yet. So why are the banks partnering with
ion Q today?
Speaker 1: Right? If the machine isn't built yet, what's the rush?
Speaker 2: This leads us to the most chilling implication derived from
the text. Demasi says they need to make sure bad
guys when they get quantum computing down the line are
not able to take advantage of snooping or hacking. He
is describing a globally recognized intelligence strategy known as store now,
decrypt later.
Speaker 1: This is the concept that directly impacts you, the listener.
Right now, hostile nation states, massive intelligence agencies, and sophisticated
hacktivist groups. No, they cannot break modern RSA encryption today,
but they also know with absolute certainty that quantum computers
are coming. So right now today they are vacuuming up
and stealing massive oceans of encrypted, secure data.
Speaker 2: They are building colossal data centers explicitly to house data
they cannot read. It is absolute gibberish to them.
Speaker 1: Right now, It's exactly like someone stealing a heavily locked safe. Today.
They drag these massive safe into a warehouse. They can't
open them. They don't have the combinations, they don't have
the torches to cut the steel. But they know for
a mathematical fact that in five or ten years someone
is going to invent a universal master key that opens
any safe instantly. So they are just hoarding the safes.
Speaker 2: That is a perfect encapsulation of the threat. They are
hoarding the safe and Those safes contain your historical financial records,
government intelligence assets, secure personal communications, and intellectual property. They
are storing them now, patiently waiting for the day they
possess a quantum computer to decrypt them later. I mean,
for intelligence agencies, unmasking a Spies communications from ten years
ago is still highly valuable.
Speaker 1: So what is de Maasi pitching to these massive banks?
Ion q is trying to build safes that even the
future master key can't open. How do you defend against
a future master key?
Speaker 2: You have to fundamentally change what the safe is made of.
You have to move away from saves built on mathematical complexity,
which quantum computers excel at breaking, and build safes based
on the immutable laws of physics. That is what post
quantum cryptography, and specifically quantum key distribution aims to achieve.
Speaker 1: Okay, how does QKD actually work? How does physics protect
a password better than math?
Speaker 2: QKD uses the principles of quantum mechanics to transmit the
encryption key, the sequence of data used to lock and
unlock the information. In a typical QKD system, you transmit
the key using individual photons particles of light over a
fiber optic cable. You encode the information into the quantum
state of those photons, like their polarization.
Speaker 1: And here is where the physics become a security guard. Right.
According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the fundamental nature
of quantum observation, you cannot measure or observe a quantum
system without inherently altering it.
Speaker 2: Precisely, if a hacker, even one with a massive quantum computer,
attempts to tap the fiber optic line and intercept or
observe the quantum key while it's being transmitted, the very
act of their observation collapses the quantum state of the photons,
the polarization changes. This creates an immediate detectable error rate.
Speaker 1: So the sender and receiver instantly know the line is
compromised before they ever send the actual sensitive data. Yes,
the hacker can't quietly copy the key because looking at
the key destroys it.
Speaker 2: It guarantees, through the laws of physics that the key
is fundamentally secure. If the key ari is intact, you
know with absolute certainty no one observed it. That is
the ultimate security Demasi's referencing, which.
Speaker 1: Brings us to a fascinating kind of philosophical clash between
the interviewer and the CEO regarding the very nature of
digital defense. Focusing deeper on cybersecurity, the anchor tries to
contextualize IONQ by comparing them to the massive traditional cybersecurity
giants that dominate the market. She asks, is your technology
that fights CyberSecure hacks faster than Palo Alto Networks or CrowdStrike?
Speaker 2: It is a completely natural question for a financial anchor
to ask. She is trimmed to benchmark this new player
against the established, multi billion dollar market leaders, But Demasi's
rebuttal is deeply revealing about the paradigm shift we are discussing.
He casually responds, I don't know if speed is relevant.
Speaker 1: When I first heard that, it sounded insane. In modern cybersecurity,
speed is literally everything. The faster you catch the hacker
inside your network, the less data, the exful trade.
Speaker 2: In the classical paradigm, speed is the only metric that matters.
Classical security is largely a sophisticated game of cat and mouse.
It is based on perimeter defense and rapid patching. You
build a firewall, a hacker finds a zero to a
vulnerability and punches a hole in it. Your detection software
like CrowdStrike or Palo Alto detects the anomaloust behavior, and
your security team races to quarantine the threat and patch
the hole as fast as physically possible.
Speaker 1: The brewche is treated as an inevitable reality. The defense
is all about reaction time exactly.
Speaker 2: But Demasi is arguing that quantum security operates on a
completely different foundational reality. He isn't trying to build a
faster fire alarm.
Speaker 1: He is stating that quantum security is about fundamental, mathematical
and physical prevention. He explicitly notes they are looking to
prevent information from being communicated to the bad guys in
the first place.
Speaker 2: If your encryption key is fundamentally unbreakable because of the
laws of quantum mechanics, because looking at it destroys it,
then the speed at which you detect a hacker trying
to break it is irrelevant. They can't break it. The
physics prevent it.
Speaker 1: As a listener, think about how your data is currently protected.
It is guarded by companies whose entire business model relies
on reacting incredibly fast to new fires. They are the
best fire departments in the world. They show up minutes
after the smoke starts. What Demasi is selling is a
house that physically cannot catch fire. Ultimate security.
Speaker 2: But he goes even further, and this is where the
conversation gets slightly ominous. He says, we want to be
the standard, if you will, for all quantum technologies, from
sensing to security, networking and computers. This raises an incredibly
important question, one that policymakers and citizens need to seriously ponder.
What happens when a single company, or even a tightly
consolidated cartel of a few companies, becomes the foundational security
layer for absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: That's a huge point. If ion Q or any single
entity becomes the standard for the banks, the power grid,
the government, and the military simultaneously, the sheer concentration of
foundational trust is unprecedented in human history.
Speaker 2: We worry about tech monopolies today regarding search engines or
social media. Monopoly on the fundamental physics of global security
is a different order of magnitude Entirely.
Speaker 1: If he can truly build that fireproof house, the traditional
fire departments, the classical cybersecurity firms will have to adapt
instantly or face obsolescence. In a post quantum world, which
is why he subtly notes that those classical companies might
be partners of the long term rather than direct competitors.
They will need to integrate these quantum standards into their
fast reaction networks to survive.
Speaker 2: But to achieve this massive standard of ultimate security, to
build the atomic sensors for the submarines, to guide the
hypersonic defense grids, and to wire the global banks with
quantum keys, you need an unparalleled manufacturing base. You cannot
just have brilliant physicists in a room writing theoretical algorithm.
Speaker 1: No, you have to physically bend metal, dope silicon, manipulate atoms.
You have to build incredibly complex, finicky machines.
Speaker 2: Where's all this physical infrastructure coming from? Because demasi pivots
sharply to focus on the ecosystem, the conversation brilliantly transitions
from software and theory back to heavy, dirty, physical industry.
The entire foundation of his sweeping claims rests entirely on
manufacturing capacity.
Speaker 1: He boasts that ion Q is the best capitalized company
in history in this specific sector, and his primary driving
focus seems to be bringing the entire menu manufacturing ecosystem,
the whole US supply chain directly into their orbit and
strictly keeping it inside the United States.
Speaker 2: He is incredibly specific about the physical hardware required to
make this reality happen. He mentions their acquisition of a
business associated with Skywater. He talks about leading the merchants apply.
He lists the actual physical components required, specialized chips, networking equipment,
and atomic clocks.
Speaker 1: This isn't just about designing a faster processor. It is
about owning the entire vertical stack of the technology. Let's
talk about the specific hardware he mentions, like atomic clocks,
because it ties directly into the geopolitical race. He constantly
references right.
Speaker 2: He states this is a race against adversaries like China.
Speaker 1: It becomes clear that the quantum race isn't just about
who can code the best algorithm. It is about who
physically owns the foundries that bake the chips.
Speaker 2: And Semiconductor fabrication is arguably the most complex manufacturing process
human beings have ever devised. Classical silicon chips require facilities
fabs that cost tens of billions of dollars, utilizing extreme
ultraviolet lithography, machines that are engineering marvels themselves. Quantum hardware
requires even more exotic manufacturing. If you are building trapped
ion systems, you need specialized photonic chips to route the
lasers that control the atoms. You need perfectly engineered vacuum chambers.
Speaker 1: And atomic clocks. We mentioned them earlier with the submarines.
But what actually is an atomic clock in this context
and why is owning the supply chain for it a
matter of national security.
Speaker 2: An atomic clock measures time by monitoring the resonant frequency
of atoms. Classical clocks use quartz crystals that vibrate at
a specific frequency when electricity is applied, but quartz is
affected by temperature and age. Atoms, as we discussed, are
universally identical and stable. By measuring the electron transitions in
atoms like caesium or rubidium, atomic clocks lose less than
a second over millions of years.
Speaker 1: That's insane precision.
Speaker 2: This ultra precise timing is the literal heartbeat of GPS,
of high frequency stock trading, and of synchronized military communications.
Speaker 1: So if the US relies on foreign adversaries for the
fundamental physical components of this next wave, if another country
builds the atomic clock that sinks our defense grid or
manufactures the photonic chip that runs the encryption. For JP Morgan,
the ultimate security DEMASI just promised is deeply compromised before
the machine is even turned on.
Speaker 2: Exactly, supply chain sovereignty is national security. You cannot have
ultimate security built on untrusted hardware. A deeply embedded hardware
backdoor in a quantum sensor or a compromised atomic clock
introduces a catastrophic vulnerability.
Speaker 1: So DEMASI is emphasizing that they are capitalizing the foundries
and the merchant supplier business to ensure the US leads
and computing, networking, sensing, and cybersecurity without relying on external,
potentially hostile supply chains.
Speaker 2: It completely echoed the original space race of the nineteen
sixties or the masses semiconductor boom of the late twentieth century.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking that, think about the sheer scale
of ambition and required here. They aren't just trying to
build a new consumer product. They are trying to capitalize, design,
and construct an entirely new physical industry from scratch. They
are building the picks, the shovels, the mines, and the
railroads for the quantum gold rush. All at once inside
the borders of the US.
Speaker 2: It is a staggering generational undertaking, and as he concludes
the interview, he reiterates that this domain is the battlefield
of the future. It is a battlefield defined not just
by bullets and missiles, but by atomic frequencies, quantum encryption keys,
entangled logistical networks, and secure domestic foundriies.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for US. Let's pull
all these thrilling threads together. Based on the short, incredibly
dense financial interview, we are witnessing the birth of an
era where quantum computing definitively leaves the realm of chalkboards
and university theories. It is stepping out of the freezing
laboratories and demanding real world application.
Speaker 2: It is actively being integrated to track chaotic missile trajectories
with flooded mail precision. It is preparing to guide submarines
in the crushing dark using the gravitational fabric of the Earth.
Speaker 1: It is racing to mathematically lock down global banking against
the looming store now decrypt later threat, and it is
forcing the total reshaping of the US industrial supply chain
to support it.
Speaker 2: It is a comprehensive technological revolution happening right beneath the
surface of the news cycle, and it leaves us with
a critical, almost philosophical problem to consider. If quantum technology
truly becomes the new baseline for reality, providing exact, ungammable
geographic locations, mathematically unbreakable data and logistics that perfectly forecast
the chaotic future, what happens to the nations, the organizations,
or the individuals that fall behind.
Speaker 1: That is the haunting reality of this transition. If you
are operating on a classical map and your opponent has
omnipresent quantum radar, you aren't just leasing the game, You
are playing a completely different game entirely. You are relegated
to a second tier classical reality while the rest of
the world operates on quantum truth.
Speaker 2: The disparity and power and capability will be unprecedented.
Speaker 1: Which brings me directly to you, the listener. We have
unpacked the atomic physics, the military strategy, the banking security crisis,
and the massive supply chain race, but we want to
know where you stand on this precipice. Do you think
the immediate deployment of this quantum tech in military and
financial sectors makes the world fundamentally safer because of this promised,
mathematically enforced ultimate security. Or do you think consolidating this
level of power simply accelerates a dangerous, invisible new arms
race where the stakes are higher than ever before. What
is your take on this? Drop a comment below and
let us know your thoughts. We will be reading them.
Speaker 2: It is a conversation we all need to be actively
having because, as Demasi warned, this future is arriving significantly
faster than everyone thought.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is. Thank you so much for joining us
for this edition of Thrilling Threads. Stay curious, stay informed,
and we will catch you on the next thread.